Polling stations in Serbia opened at 07:00 for the early parliamentary elections and will close at 20:00. A total of 6,450,523 voters are eligible to vote at 8,392 polling stations, 93 of which are abroad. Eighteen lists with a total of 2,418 candidates are competing for 250 parliamentary seats. Nine lists were nominated by minority national communities, but not the Croatian community, which will not have a candidate of its own. All voters will go to the polls according to local time in Serbia.
The first hours of election day were marked by high voter turnout. Queues in front of numerous polling stations in Belgrade began to form from the early morning hours. A particularly large crowd was recorded in front of the Sixth Belgrade Gymnasium, where the queue of voters stretched almost to the Zvezdara theatre. A long column also formed in front of the Dental Technical School in Zvezdara, and on Banovo Brdo, citizens waited in front of the polling station at the Faculty of Forestry. Queues were also recorded at the polling station on Bulevar umetnosti in Novi Beograd.
There was also great interest in voting at polling stations outside Serbia. Queues formed at polling places in Washington and Los Angeles. Musician Đorđe Stijepović, who spoke to N1 from in front of the polling station in Los Angeles, highlighted that he had never seen so many people voting before. Voters organised themselves excellently, first gathering in a Serbian café in Santa Monica, from where they set off in a procession towards the polling station. “I think that this time everything was different from anything I have experienced before. We gathered in a Serbian café in Santa Monica and came to the polling place in a procession. This looks fascinating here,” Stijepović said. He added that people had come to vote from all over California, but also from Texas, Arizona and other parts of the western USA. “It is a matter of hundreds of people. It will take hours for everyone to get their turn. I have never seen so many people here and I think people will be waiting until the early morning hours,” he said. Large crowds were also recorded in Washington, where, according to a report by N1 journalist Jovana Đurović, a queue in front of the Serbian embassy began to form before the polling station opened. Among the voters were those who had travelled from distant parts of the USA, including Florida and Miami, meaning some had to travel by plane for several hours to exercise their voting rights.
Election day was also marked by incidents. Around 30 people broke into polling station 27 in Doljevac and physically attacked those present, disrupting the voting process, said Niš-based lawyer and political activist Dragana Milutinović to N1. Milutinović claims that the police are in front of that polling station but are not reacting. According to her, citizens also broke into two other polling stations, attacking members of the electoral committees.
Aleksandar Vučić also came to vote, accompanied by his wife Tamara. Ilija Srdanović, the leader of the Student List “Students Win”, voted today in the early parliamentary elections in Novi Sad. On social networks, the mobilisation of voters and calls for high turnout continue, led by supporters of the Student List “Students Win”. According to reports by the Nova.rs portal, queues of citizens have formed in front of polling stations since early morning.
